


close enough to wonder

by moonfishes



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Introspection, M/M, set on doyoung's birthday, this fic owes its entirety to mark's recent foray into poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29142627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonfishes/pseuds/moonfishes
Summary: Without looking at Johnny, he blurted out: “Yo, but like, what did you really think of it?”“Of what?”“Like. What I wrote. What did you really think of it?”Mark, the precipice, the chasm, and the charge.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 22
Kudos: 143





	close enough to wonder

**Author's Note:**

> Anyways, this fic owes its entirety to Mark Lee, who decided to post his writing on instagram and not let me sleep! After that, I just had to write this and get it out, so apologies for any mistakes--this is (very) unbeta'd and might need an edit or two, i just did not want to let it stew in my mind for any longer tonight. Well. Morning, now.
> 
> This fic is set... yesterday (Doyoung's birthday) & follows Mark as he posts his writing on insta. Johnny is there, because of course he is.
> 
> Title adapted from what mark wrote: Far but close enough to wonder / Is it reachable?

Sometimes, Mark couldn’t sleep.

There were a lot of possible reasons why. The gnawing silence of his room, devoid of Jungwoo’s constant laughter. The white door that muffled the one creaky floorboard in their living-room that Yuta always stepped on. Not having a roommate—when the members retreated into their rooms at night, they had a roommate to talk to as they prepared for bed. Mark didn’t have that, unless you counted their manager, who didn’t always sleep in their dorm, and therefore left Mark to his own devices most of the time. 

But Mark knew it wasn’t usually wasn’t the silence, or the floorboards, and definitely not the living situation: he was content with not having a roommate, just sharing—sometimes—with their manager. In the privacy of his own room, he could fill the silence with his mind and let his thoughts linger in the corners of the room before they bounced back into him. Without the fear of embarrassing himself in front of the members, he would sometimes verbalize these thoughts; other times, he wrote it down, as best as he could. It was a process that could only be granted to him alone. 

Yet, today, he found himself uncomfortable by the silence, in a way that was new to him. Silence was what he was meant to slip into through sleep, yet he found himself unable to go under—and as the clock ticked through the twilight, he felt himself getting more and more restless. Wanting to contain this strange _thing_ that he was feeling, but not knowing how to.

It came naturally to him, then, as he kept staring up into the ceiling, to write it all down. So he found a notebook and wrote, chasing his feelings with his pen: he was dangling on the edge of consciousness and unconsciousness, existing within the intersection of a venn-diagram that had been blurred beyond recognition. It was dark but not hollow. Black but not bitter. There was a precipice, somewhere, past the _good nights_ that had been mumbled to him earlier, that he couldn’t reach past. A boy who grew up living with sharks did not need to learn how to swim—it came to him naturally. Just like how these thoughts came unbidden into the doorstep of his mind. 

When he was done with it all, he surfaced, gasping: it was like the silence had broken. He looked at what he’d written, feeling both proud and embarrassed: it was good, but also just a long unbroken stream of thoughts. Maybe—with a little bit of editing—he could tighten it up and do something with it. Post it somewhere. He thought about Bubble, but then remembered that he mostly only communicated with Korean fans there—so his mind turned to his newly-created instagram. 

It wouldn’t be completely outlandish to post, he reasoned. The members had posted all sorts of stuff on instagram, and he knew that Kun frequently talked about his producing work to the fans—surely they would appreciate a little look into Mark’s writing process. He typed it all up into his notes app, editing on the go, but felt that it was too bare like that, just words on an ugly white background. It needed more—something to offset the grimness of the background.

He grabbed his phone and texted Johnny: _dude sorry to bother u at this time (hope i’m not waking u up haha) but do u have any suggestions for an easy editing app i could use??_

The response was nearly instantaneous. Johnny evidently was up doing something. _PicsArt is pretty easy and since you have an iPhone now, it should work pretty well._ Mark rolled his eyes at the jab. _Why? Editing something?_

 _aight thanks!!! will explain in a sec,_ replied Mark. He’d immediately downloaded the app. Johnny was obsessed with all this editing stuff, so he trusted him with this. After fumbling his way around the app for ten minutes, he had managed to come up with something he thought worked: his writing had been pasted on a multicoloured abstract background, and he’d warped the letters to create a slightly psychedelic effect—weird enough to be dreamlike, yet also ordinary enough to not scare everyone. Finally, he saved it, then surveyed it once more, trying not to cringe as the embarrassment hit again—how would it be received? Maybe posting it was a bad idea.

His thoughts were interrupted by his notifications bar lighting up. _?_ Johnny had texted him.

_ahh i’m editing something for instagram. would it be ok if i showed u first before i post?_

_Of course! You don’t need to ask!_ Mark smiled; he could hear Johnny’s affronted voice all the way from his room five floors down. 

Mark attached the two edited photos with a _hahaha ok tell me what u think then_ and sent it before he could overthink it even more. While waiting for Johnny to reply, he stared at the photo again—somehow it felt worse than he remembered it as. The rhythm felt off, the words slightly disjointed—had it been like that when he first read it? Would Johnny think that it was bad—Johnny who had a much more confident grasp of language, and who never seemed to falter with his words? Agonized, he was about to text Johnny to tell him not to worry, but Johnny had beat him to replying: _Dude,_ he wrote, _that’s really good. You sure you want to post it though?_

Mark felt even more embarrassed by the praise. He wasn’t sure if he deserved it. _yeah i guess, why?_

Johnny’s response this time took longer. _It’s some deep shit, that’s all. But if you’re ok with that, then yeah, post it._

 _ok thanks!!_ Mark shot back. He wasn’t sure if Johnny had meant it in a good way or bad way, but he thought about it more: it was deep, but not too personal, and real enough that it felt like something he could authentically share with everyone. Before he could stop himself, he loaded up the pictures on instagram and posted both of them. Then he shut off his phone before the notifications could come flooding in. He would leave the regret to the morning. But before he could close his eyes and try to sleep again, there was a knock and his door opened:

“Hey,” said Johnny, closing the door quietly behind him. “Saw you posted.”

“Yeah. Guess I did.” Mark felt strangely light-headed. Perhaps it was because he was still unable to sleep. 

He looked up at Johnny, who was slowly moving towards him. Without thinking, Mark scrambled to make room for him on his bed, before remembering that it was unlikely that Johnny would join him there. Panicked, he tried to unscramble, but instead managed to tangle himself up around his blankets. 

Johnny surveyed the proceedings with a quirk of his lips. “Mark, it’s ok, I’ll sit on the floor.”

“No! Don’t! I mean, like, uh,” Mark’s felt himself burn up. It was so easy to embarrass himself around Johnny. “Only if you want to. I can make space on the bed, it’s like no big deal, there’s plenty of space—”

 _“Mark,”_ Johnny interrupted firmly, “stop. It’s ok. I’m going to sit on the floor.” He sat on the floor. “I just wanted to see if you were alright, anyways.”

“Uh, do I seem, like. Not ok?”

Johnny raised his eyebrows. “You did just post some pretty deep stuff on instagram.”

“I mean,” Mark started, then stopped. He didn’t know how to explain it, but he tried again: “I guess I’m not like, sad or anything? I’m just thinking. Or have been thinking. Feeling very, uh,” Where did his words go, now that he had stopped writing? “thinky, I guess.”

Johnny looked amused. “You’re feeling very thinky.”

“No! I mean, yes,” Mark said, feeling frustrated. “Yeah. I just couldn’t sleep. And it made me think about why I couldn’t. Like, I was on this… this boundary of sleep and not-sleep, and I couldn’t be pushed into either place by outward force or want or anything like that. I was just, lying there. Existing. But not really feeling like it was real. You ever get that feeling?”

Mark watched Johnny cross his legs. The amusement had faded from his face—he was back to his default look, and it made Mark worried, even though he knew he had no reason to be. Johnny just had this _look_ on him that Yuta had jokingly called his Resting Bitch Face—if he wasn’t cheesing it up for everyone, he always just looked—intense, or even angry, even though he’d assured the members multiple times that it was just his default expression. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” 

“Never for long, though,” said Johnny. “I try to reason with myself. Like, I either sleep there and then, or I get up and not sleep at all.”

Perhaps it was testament to how stubborn Johnny was by nature that he could ground himself that easily. “I try to as well, but I guess it never really works.”

Johnny looked at him. His eyes, though hooded, were strangely piercing: for a second, Mark thought he was going to say _try harder, then._ “Does this have to do with how the boy grew up living with sharks?”

“Dude.” Mark’s eyebrows furrowed. “What? Did you think—” The realization dawned, then, and he laughed. “Wait, seriously, did you think it was about you guys? Nah, of course not. I meant it more, like, a metaphor. And it was more comparing the sharks to the night, you know? It’s just me. It could never be you guys, you couldn’t have thought... ”

“I don’t know what I thought,” Johnny said, after a considerable pause. Mark still couldn’t read his expression at all. “But I was just worried.”

“Nah, seriously, don’t worry about it. It’s just,” Mark waved vaguely around his room, “this room and all. I have—space, you know? And, like, it makes me think. Or it allows me to think. I don’t know.”

“Would you rather you have one of us as a roommate?”

Mark remembered his earlier thoughts on how ill-suited he would be as each member’s roommate. “Uh.”

Johnny’s voice had turned teasing. “Would you rather _me_ as your roommate?”

God, that was what he was the most scared of. “No! I mean yes, I mean—I don’t know, I haven’t thought—”

Johnny laughed. “Mark, it’s ok if you don’t want me to be. It’s not like we will be, anyways, I was just joking.”

“Right, um, yeah. Of course...” There was silence, then, and Mark ran his fingers nervously around the edges of his blanket. “What were you doing up, anyways?”

“Couldn’t sleep. So I decided not to,” Johnny remarked wryly. “Hyuck was more than happy when he heard that I was gonna go up. He said he wanted to shout curse words whenever he killed someone in League, so I decided to be nice to him and actually leave.”

There it was—the fond tone that Johnny used whenever he talked about Hyuck. Mark felt strangely bitter upon hearing it, although he knew he had no reason to be—all the hyungs talked about Hyuck with that same fond, exasperated tone. Johnny was no different. “Haha, I bet Hyuck’s having a good time then.”

Johnny hummed. “Mm, he is.”

Silence descended again. Somehow Johnny was nonplussed by it—he merely rocked himself back and forth on the floor of Mark’s room, looking at everything yet nothing in particular. It made Mark jittery and nervous: he felt like he was being assessed. Like Johnny’s eyes were bouncing off the wall and into his soul. Without looking at Johnny, he blurted out: “Yo, but like, what did you really think of it?”

“Of what?”

“Like. What I wrote. What did you really think of it?”

“Ah.” Johnny shifted. Mark couldn’t tell if he was deliberately drawing out the silence, but there was a long pause before he said, “I wasn’t lying when I said it was good.”

“ _Yes,_ but like,” Mark gestured awkwardly with his hands, hoping that Johnny would understand what he meant, “just… do you think… you understand?” 

There was another pause. “I don’t know,” Johnny said carefully. “I don’t think you fully understand it yourself. So how could I?”

Mark bristled. He was about to defend himself, but he couldn’t find the words to do so—he could feel what he was trying to express, yet it was so hard to say it out. Maybe Johnny did have a point; in what he posted earlier, it was also less about the words and more about the feeling. It was the feeling of being so viscerally close to something yet never being able to reach it; this thing had manifested so solidly in his mind yet was intangible when placed in front of him. 

Perhaps the silence that he felt uncomfortable with earlier could be explained through this feeling. That if you could personify silence, it felt like Johnny today; unsettling, unknown, a yawning gulf that beckoned to him for reasons he didn’t know. He felt the pull, then, from a still-sitting Johnny, one meter away from him in a comfortable hoodie and a placid expression that Mark couldn’t begin to decipher. He was close enough that it made Mark wonder—what would happen if he inched forwards, just a little bit? If he just slid down to the floor—if he placed a hand on the plush hoodie that Johnny was wearing—would Johnny push him away? 

Mark rolled himself onto his front. He was eye-to-eye with Johnny now. “I was just writing,” he said, weakly. “It doesn’t need to be fully understood.”

Johnny turned completely towards him. To have Johnny’s full attention like this—it made Mark never want to turn away. “I know,” Johnny said. He was smiling, then, a lazy upturn of his lips, and Mark’s gut churned—with nervousness, with desire, with want. “And I think it was really good. And I’m proud of you, for posting that—I’m sure the fans are, too.”

“Yeah?” His body was moving then, shifting closer and closer to Johnny. He didn’t know what it was; maybe it was the restlessness of the unfinished night, the post-euphoric feeling of writing, or Johnny’s inquisitive gaze, resting heavy in the half-dimmed light. Johnny had not moved forwards, but he had not moved away either, and Mark had felt emboldened by it: the gnawing silence, resting in flux. Waiting, wanting. Static anticipating the charge.

Mark took a breath, and leaned in.


End file.
